The approaches described in this section could be pursued, but are not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Internet Protocol (IP) telephony is a technology that is being widely implemented and gaining widespread acceptance. Powerful applications that are enabling IP telephony and contributing to its popularity are unified communication systems, commonly referred to as Unified Messaging (UM) systems.
Unified Messaging Systems
UM systems enable users to receive e-mail, voice mail and fax messages in a uniform manner and to access them through a single interface. One example of a commercially available Unified Messaging system tool is Cisco Unity from Cisco Systems, Inc. of San Jose, Calif. Since UM systems are such a valuable tool, availability of a given UM system is business critical. Ideally, a UM system is constantly available for use.
IP-based UM system components are typically distributed across a network. Furthermore, such distributed systems commonly consist of a large number of components. Hence, a failure in the system is more probable as the number of components increases. Furthermore, isolation and diagnosis of system failures increase in difficulty as the number of components increases.
Management of Messaging Systems
Currently, SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) based tools are available for managing individual UM system components such as a centralized message store, a database server, or routers. A number of tools use SNMP, for example, to extract system information from various MIBs (Management Information Bases), and/or CMIP (Common Management Information Protocol) and/or HTTP, to monitor the status of a system. However, such tools provide for management of discrete parts of a system rather than for end-to-end management of the entire system. A key requirement from the perspective of a system manager or administrator is immediate acquisition of information regarding situations where an end user or business critical operation is affected. Existing tools do not readily facilitate identification and discrimination of issues that actually affect end users or business critical operations.
With respect to monitoring individual services and components, there are existing tools that monitor the services of UM systems. However, the known solutions are installed within the UM system, e.g., on the messaging server. Therefore, such tools are intrusive to the messaging system.
An example scenario is as follows. A specific digit pattern from an IP-PBX/PBX system exists to forward calls to a voice mail system. An administrator inadvertently deletes the pattern, which will cause all the call forwarding to the voice mail component to fail. Thus, users will not receive their voice mail, but existing system level tools are unable to identify the issue.
An example in which the system environment could be an issue is if the routes configured into a remote site gateway or router are modified. This could cause failures which would not be apparent when the health of the gateway or router is monitored. However, a user trying to retrieve voice mails from the system would most likely experience problems.
Another important attribute that administrator users often want to measure and monitor is the performance of the system, especially under load conditions. One simple metric that affects business users is the time it takes for a message notification indication such as a “Message Waiting” indicator, pager alert, phone call and the like, after a message is left. For example, a significantly long period between the leaving of a message and the related notification may indicate potential configuration issues or a system failure which affects an end user.
Based on the foregoing, there is a clear need for a technique for proactively monitoring the performance, health and functionality of a UM system and its environment. There is a further need for monitoring a UM system in a non-intrusive manner.